Broken Falls
by eclipsed heart
Summary: POST-FANG ONESHOT! The time has come for Fang's final promise to be tried. Twenty years, come and gone, and Max uncertainly heads back to the cliff where the hawks once lived. But what will she find awaiting her? Will she regret trusting Fang?


**AN: Okay, after the end of _FANG_, I needed to know what would happen. Twenty years is much too long to wait, don't you agree? So here is what **_**just might **_**happen exactly twenty years after Max finds Fang's letter. I hope you enjoy! (:**

**BY THE WAY: The summary clearly says that this is POST-_FANG_. Obviously, THERE WILL BE SOME MILD SPOILERS. Don't say I didn't warn you...**

**_Now_ you can enjoy it. (:  
**

Broken Falls

Summary: POST-FANG ONESHOT! The time has come for Fang's final promise to be tried. Twenty years, come and gone, and Max uncertainly heads back to the cliff where the hawks once lived. But what will she find awaiting her?

--

It had been exactly twenty years, twenty years since the day Max had first read Fang's last letter. The letter was now kept in a box at the back of Max's closet, alongside an ink-black feather plucked from Fang's wings, an old, worn black T-shirt he had left behind, and the ring he had given Max for her birthday.

Max knew what day it was. She woke up with a start, gasping. Dylan was still asleep beside her, though she didn't doubt that when he awoke, he would also realize what day it was. She quietly got out of the bed, and opened the closet. She dressed and, on a whim, she reached for the box. She didn't know why she did it, especially since she had it memorized, but she tucked the letter into her back pocket.

…_the top of that cliff where we first met the hawks and learned to fly with them. You know the one…_

Yes. Indeed, Max knew the one.

She left the house when the sun was scarcely beginning its climb in the sky. She didn't tell anyone, didn't leave a note, but she knew that Dylan would take care of the kids.

That was the thing about Dylan: Max didn't need to explain things to him. He knew and understood everything about her with a single glance, or a solitary word. He never questioned her judgments. He would know where she was and why she was going. Dylan would also know that she intended to return, sooner or later.

The flight was much too short to Max. She spent the entire time attempting to collect her thoughts. She hadn't seen Fang in twenty years. Today was the day Max had feared would never come, but it was also the day she had feared would come too soon.

And so it had.

When Max saw the cliff and the hawks' nests below her, she circled around a few times, checking to see if Fang was there yet. In the brightening light of the sun, Max could see that the cliff was deserted. Not even the hawks were there.

…_If I'm alive, I'll be there, waiting for you. You can bet on it._

Max landed gracefully and sat down with her back against one of the nests. Perhaps he was just late. After all, the day was still young. Max decided to give him a chance with this promise, despite all of the broken promises he had left behind for her to deal with.

And promises weren't the only things he had broken: though Max would never admit it, Fang had broken her heart.

But he had taken that with him.

{[(/*\)]}

Fang knew what day it was the moment he woke up. He could feel an ache in his ones, a quiver in his feathers. Exactly twenty years had passed. He had accomplished what he'd set out to do. He hadn't expired. The world was still in one piece.

He had no way out of his "appointment."

Fang left the house in the late morning. He said nothing to his flock; they were used to him just taking off suddenly every now and then. This was hardly any different.

Fang tried to keep his cool as he flew to the cliff he so often visited. The hawks had abandoned the place years before and he just found it calming to sit there and look out on the world.

Fang's eyes traced the cliff as he neared, trying to see if Max had shown up yet. He almost stopped dead in his tracks and dropped like a rock when he saw her there, reading a piece of paper that looked suspiciously like the letter he had left for her all those years ago.

She was alive. She had come. She was there and she was beautiful.

And Fang found that he couldn't face her. Not yet anyway.

He made a U-turn and flew into a thicket of trees near to the cliff, barely making the leaves rustle. The moment he made himself comfortable on a branch, his mind went into panic mode.

He hadn't expected Max to actually show up. Fang had been positive that what he had done to her was unforgivable and that she would never, _ever_ want to see him again.

Yet there she was, waiting for him. Maybe she had really forgiven him. Or maybe Max had just come to give Fang exactly what he deserved. And maybe he wouldn't be strong enough to take it.

But Max…she was his childhood best friend, his first love. She had known Fang better than anyone on the planet, and he was sure she still did. He had never opened up to anyone more than he'd opened up to Max. Besides, he had already broken too many of his promises to her. He owed it to her to at least show up and fulfill this promise.

But what if she wanted him to go back with her? Or what if she wanted to go back with him? Everything he had built for himself and his flock over the years could fall apart.

He watched her silently until the colors of twilight began to melt into the sky. Max had given up sitting still and started pacing up and down the edge of the cliff. She had stopped reading the letter, having tucked it away into her pocket.

In the end, Fang couldn't get up enough courage to face her, too afraid of the unknown and the answers he didn't have.

{[(/*\)]}

Max sat there, on the cliff, the whole afternoon, her eyes constantly scanning the horizon for the shape of the dark wings she remembered so well. She saw nothing.

When the stars dominated the sky, Max resolved that she would give him until midnight. If he didn't show, then Max would have no choice but to accept that Fang was…

No. She wouldn't dare let herself think it. Not until midnight. Even then, Max wasn't sure she'd accept it.

So when the stars whispered to her eyes that the day was lost, Max didn't know what to think, what to do. At first, she thought she might cry. Then, she screamed, a short, pathetic, rusty snarl that hurt her throat, due to the fact that she hadn't had a sip of water all day. Her mind was in a frenzy. She felt so completely incomplete. All those years without Fang at her side had felt wrong in a way, but now...facing his death was like having the world disappear from beneath her feet.

In all her blinding rage at her teenage lover, in all the crazed turmoil of her mind, Max felt so lost that she didn't even know what to feel anymore.

He was dead. Fang was gone forever. And no matter how powerful Max was, or would become, she would never be able to reverse death.

Without thinking, Max started running. After all, that's what she always did when she was angry: she ran, away from her problems, away from the world. Of course, because Max's mind was everywhere but in reality at that moment, she didn't stop to think that, because she was on a cliff, there wasn't really very much room to run. And, at the speed she ran, she would run out of cliff _fast_.

And she did.

Max was soaring, but in a way much different than what she usually experienced: she was free-falling.

There are many things one can do in the act of falling. One can think and ponder upon whatever subject they wish. One can converse with another. One can play games. One can sleep if preferred. The ground seems to approach so slowly that one could probably even have enough time to be bored. But Max…Max was surprised.

Adrenaline coursed through her veins as her eyes opened wide at her quickly-moving surroundings. She felt a thrill that she thought only came from flying. She laughed.

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, perhaps buried as deep as the box in the back of her closet, there must have been a little voice (no, not _the _Voice) telling her to extend her wings before it was too late. But surely she couldn't hear it over the wind in her ears, the laughter in her throat.

Max just kept falling.

She mostly likely didn't notice it, but there was a rustle in the trees nearby, a _whoosh_ through the air, a break in the still night that wasn't from Max, that didn't belong there.

Max closed her eyes, the wind at her back now, and tasted the sweet air on her tongue. She fantasized what it would be like to go _splat_ against the earth. She wondered what it would be like to join Fan in death. She could see it, feel it, imagine it.

But Max's dream abruptly came to an end as soon as she felt a pair of dark, strong arms on her back, violently breaking her fall.

And then nothing else mattered to Max. She even forgot to be mad that he had broken yet another promise in a long line of broken promises.

All that mattered, Max decided, was that Fang was there. Fang was back, no matter how late he was. And the emptiness Max had felt since Fang had soared out of her life no longer felt empty.

Max opened her eyes and smiled up at Fang, trying to find words to describe the happiness and the elation she felt at that moment. There were none.

Fang looked down at Max's face, the moonlight woven into her windblown hair and he said the three words he'd been craving to say for the past twenty years:

"I'm sorry, Max."

**REVIEWS are always greatly appreciated. (:**


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